


Think Of Me Instead

by LameJane



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Aka I've named but not described the reader, Alternate Universe - 1940s, F/M, First Kiss, POV Third Person, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Stream of Consciousness, does it still count as an insert ahdffs sorry i just cant do the y / n thing, uhmm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:10:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26120119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LameJane/pseuds/LameJane
Summary: It’s a day he thinks of often to help him sleep, when he’s settled on the floor next to his cushy, soft bed and the city outside isn’t enough to drown out the noise in his head. The memory that replays in his mind like a roll of film. A time when everything felt so much simpler.He thinks of Francis and honey-sweetened milk, and how the light craved her as much as he does.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Original Female Character(s), Steve Rogers/Reader
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	Think Of Me Instead

They agreed to meet at a halfway point between the train station and Steve’s apartment, the bustling crowds and coal smoke unsympathetic to Steve’s ever-fluctuating health. It was a compromise Steve had agreed to, but had no intention of upholding, and if Francis was surprised or annoyed, she didn’t show either when she pulled him into a long, crushing hug in the middle of the busy foot traffic. 

Steve carries her single bag with both hands, the luggage too heavy to pretend otherwise, and listens to her tell stories that couldn’t wait until they got to the apartment. They were too important, too exciting--she couldn’t wait to tell him everything. 

When they finally get in she takes a deep breath, running her hand on the wallpaper that covers the living room.

“I missed this,” she announces, and when Steve looks up from where he’s set her things, she’s looking at him. Not the creamy floral wallpaper she always takes the time to insult— _ looks like someone splattered clam chowder on the walls,  _ she’d say—but him. 

They settle on the floor in front of the couch, Francis breaking open her luggage right there in front of him without a care in the world. She tells him more about Ohio, about the aunt she had gone to visit, the things she had done while there. Steve tries to listen while she searches through her case, but he can see her frilly white dedicates folded on top, and it makes it hard to focus. 

He comes back to himself when she grabs his hand in hers. Steve is damn confused for a moment until she shakes something out into it—an amber-colored hard candy. 

“You have no idea how hard it was to save these, but I knew you’d like them, so.” 

Her voice trails off timidly, and she fills the lapse by tossing a candy into her mouth. Steve follows suit.

It’s a waxy honey flavor, bringing him memories of his mother and how she would mix teaspoons in his milk as a treat. It had been a long, long time since he had either milk or honey--long enough that he forgot how much he loved them both. He tells Francis as much, and she smiles proudly.

They sit there savoring the candies silently, the late-afternoon sun warms the living room, shafts of its golden light cutting through the lacy curtains to settle on Frans skin, as if desperate to touch her. The longer he holds the sweet candy against his tongue the more he can taste something else alongside it. A spice--cinnamon, maybe, or ginger. Or maybe it’s the taste of Francis; the candies coveted by her for so long they’ve picked up her taste the same way whiskey would of the barrel it’s stored in.

“You ever been kissed, Stevie?”

The question comes so suddenly Steve almost flinches, but he holds himself together enough to jest, “You know, with Buck overseas I thought I’d hear the last of his teasing” but he can feel the way his pulse picks up, the heat blooming on his cheeks.

Francis shifts to lean against the couch next to him. “I’m not teasin’, I just. Wanna know.”

“You already know,” Steve grumbles. 

There’s a lapse where the only noise in the apartment is the dull thuds of their upstairs neighbors and the candy clacking against Fran’s teeth. “Have you?” he asks, quieter than the thuds. The silence stretches on, and on until he’s not sure she’s heard him. When she does finally speak, he’s certain she hasn’t. 

“You remember Jud? Jud Breaker?”

“I remember his fists,” Steve finds himself spitting. Jud Breaker would wait outside the hospital Steve’s mother worked at when they were younger with the sole purpose of beating him up. Steve didn’t know he was actually there because his father was dying just a few feet away in the TB ward. He hadn’t seen or thought of him since grade school.

“Would you believe he was living with his grandparents in Ohio?” Steve raises an eyebrow, waiting patiently for this story to make sense. “We ran into each other at one of the markets. I didn’t recognize him at first, but he acted like we were lifelong best friends or something. Think he was just surprised. Guess I was too because when he invited me to a movie I said yes.” Francis swallows and leans her head back against the couch cushions to stare at the water-stained ceiling. 

“When he kissed me I thought of you.”

Steve watches her profile as a wave of emotions crash into him. Confusion as to why she was telling him this, betrayal because Jud Breaker was a bully and a jerk, and confusion again because did she really just say she thought of him while--

“I just. Missed you while I was there, and he reminded me of you. I mean, he reminded me of how much I missed home, and I think I just...I wanted it to be you. I wanted to be with you.”

“Because you were homesick?” Steve asks.

Francis shakes her head. “I was only homesick because you weren’t there.” 

The words snap against Steve’s skin like bolts of electricity, and he knows he should say something, but the air suddenly feels delicate enough to shatter, too delicate for his clumsy words, but he puts them out there anyway. “Are you still--do you still, uh. Want--want to?” And he’s certain he’s obliterated the moment, but Francis’s lips--how long has Steve been staring out her mouth?--pull up in a shy smile, and then slowly, softly press against his own.

Steve’s skin prickles like it does right before an asthma attack, but he knows the goosebumps running up his arms aren’t harbingers of an episode. His whole body seems to tremble against the soft press of Francis’ lips. 

It’s clumsy because he can’t focus on anything but the softness of her mouth and the taste of warmed honey when she brushes his lips with her tongue. He follows her guiding lead until he thinks he understands how to translate what he’s seen into what he does and brings his trembling, sweaty hand away from its spot clenched in his trousers to brush against her cheek, but as soon as he does--

_ ZAP _

Their lips pull apart with a wet smack, Steve’s eyes snapping open to find Fran’s hand pressed against her flushed cheek, and it takes a moment for them both to realize what happened. 

Steve is the first to laugh, the anxiousness flooding from him with each released breath, and when Francis joins in, shoulders shaking and head bowed forward, he muffles his jittery chuckles into the softness of her hair. 

It’s a day he thinks of often to help him sleep, when he’s settled on the floor next to his cushy, soft bed and the city outside isn’t enough to drown out the noise in his head. The memory that replays in his mind like rolls of film. A time when everything felt so much simpler. 

He thinks of Francis and honey-sweetened milk, and how the light craved her as much as he does.

**Author's Note:**

> i cannot for the life of me tell if this is just incomprehensible trash but my brain pushed this on me when i was trying to fall asleep and i desperately need to feel like i've completed something so! i'm sending it off! here she is! Thank you for reading it! genuinely sorry if i wasted your time dsfdjajfhsd


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